Transforming Geosciences Research

2018 AHM Preview: FAIR skies ahead for Earth science data management

Shelley Stall, Director of Data Programs at the American Geophysical Union

Shelley Stall is the Director of Data Programs from the American Geophysical Union. At the 5th Annual EarthCube All Hands Meeting in June, she will present “Enabling FAIR Data in the Earth and Space Sciences” as part of the External Partnership Opportunities Panel Session. The FAIR data science effort to make geodata Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable has been gaining momentum in the geosciences community over the past few years.

A move toward better collaboration

FAIR data science intends to bring publishers, data repositories, and researchers to a mutual understanding of data handling. Stall will talk about how to do this with FAIR data science. FAIR Data Principles benefit the whole Earth, Space, and Environmental Science (ESES) community because they help researchers, data repositories, and publishers alike. This will also lead to dialogue on exactly how FAIR data can increase scientific discovery. By promoting understanding amongst the ESES community, FAIR data augments collaboration and interdisciplinary discussion.

Empowering science with data handling

Enabling FAIR data science does a multiple things. It grants researchers understanding of how to share, document, and reference data consistently. It allows publishers easy, trustworthy sharing and citing with well-defined policies and guidelines. Further, it drives repositories to create well fleshed-out meta data descriptions and provide resources for navigating it all. Especially relevant, all of this will enhance the data itself, in addition to easier access.

FAIR data science takes a village… and good tools

To explain these topics, Stall will address the different functioning parts of the project. For example, EarthCube’s Project 418 is a great pathway to FAIR data science. Participants will learn about the progress and future of the project as well as how to be involved.

A few things become evident when working with the FAIR data movement: the importance of repositories to maintaining the scientific record and the catalytic effects that good data storage can have on discovery. The collaborative effort of the community that established the guidelines is going to help research be more understandable and citable. Now it just takes enabling and adopting these tactics and we can change the way we handle our data.

Session Leaders:

Register for the All Hands Meeting!

The 2018 All Hands Meeting is just around the corner! This year’s theme, “Platform for Integration” addresses a wide variety of topics, from hands-on demo of the P418 pilot project on EarthCube-related use cases, to audience engagement.